


The Dreaming and the Dead

by Lyrecho, MirrorMystic



Series: The War of Dreams [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Action/Adventure, Childhood Friends, Drama & Romance, Estranged friends to Friends to Lovers, F/F, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, High Fantasy, Multi, Original Mythology, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2020-10-26 11:54:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20741789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrecho/pseuds/Lyrecho, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MirrorMystic/pseuds/MirrorMystic
Summary: Once upon a time, three best friends met in a land beset by war. But when tragedy strikes, they go their separate ways-- one, finding shelter in faith; another, burying her grief in bloodshed.Years later, the kingdom's lost princess has returned with a mission: to see her best friends reunited after her death tore them apart. Now, a priest, a rebel, and a ghost set out on a journey to rediscover one another-- and maybe, just maybe, save their homeland along the way.





	1. Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A meeting at the threshold of life and death.

_Hot red rips like copper across Tira’s tongue, and she grits her teeth around a scream as her obsidian blade slides home into the gut of the Imperial bearing down on her.  
  
__Silk of gold winks at her from where it twines around the hilt, as miraculously unstained as it has always been, and in that moment, she feels as if Stel is still with her.  
  
_These men die in your name,_ she thinks, and rips her sword free to find a new target.  
  
__Until she’s bled the Empire of every soldier they have, it will never be enough.  
  
__“Hmm. A bit gloomy, don’t you think?” Nervous and unsure, laughter still familiar even after all these years echoes out, and the red-stained reality Tira fights in warps into something shifted slightly left. “A bit morbid.” A freckled hand reaches up to tuck moon-pale hair behind her ear, and a girl long dead steps into a warzone she has no business being in.  
  
__“Stel - ” Tira’s voice is a rasp as instinct takes over and screams for the vision that wavers ahead of her. Dressed in summer shades of sun and cloud, as pure and smiling as the day she died - the day she was run through with the very sword Tira now wields in her name...  
  
__“Stel,” she says, and can say no more, because there are no words for this kind of thing.  
  
__“Me,” Stel says, soft and melancholy, her lips gracing Tira with a bittersweet smile. “Oh, how I’ve longed for you to finally hear me, Tira!” She darts forward, no connect between Point A and Point B. She does not move, not truly - whatever dream this is, the laws of physics have no hold, and a wish is as good as law.  
  
__Tira does not know how this is possible. She wonders if she’s dead.  
  
__She wonders if she minds.  
  
__Stel slaps her, and Tira recoils - partly in pain, partly from the visceral swarm of emotions that kick to life as she realises she’s just felt Stel’s skin on her own for the first time in years.  
  
__“No dying!” Stel says. “It’s bad enough you got one foot far enough through the door for me to be able to contact you like this. If you try to go tumbling the rest of the way through, I _will_ kick your ass.”  
  
__“You’ve never won a fight against me in your life,” Tira protests automatically, a little choked up, and Stel rewards her with that little cat grin of hers.  
  
__“Good thing I’m dead then, hmm?” She shakes her head, and hair bound in sunlight ribbons - the same ribbons Tira now holds one half of - falls over her shoulders, as long and unruly in death as it was in life.  
  
__“Is this real?” Tira wonders, and reaches out to place a hand on Stel’s chest.  
  
__Still. No heartbeat. No movement of breath at all.  
  
__Stel reaches up, to link her hand with Tira’s entwining their fingers together one by one, as if each one was the lock binding a sacred promise.  
  
__“Very real,” she confirms. “You probably won’t remember this when you wake up, so maybe it doesn’t even matter in the end but - it’s real. _I’m_ real, and I’ve waited so long to be able to just _talk_ to you again.” She sighs, eyes fluttering closed in bliss. “I have so many things I want to say to you - _need_ to say to you...but. I do not know how long this will last. If you do remember this, I want you to remember _me_, not what words I have to say.”  
  
__“Of course I’ll remember,” Tira reassures her. “I always have remembered. I’ll never forget you. Not a single part.” That golden ribbon, the last tie binding her to halcyon days long past. “I can’t.”  
  
__“Ah, is it bad that that makes me happy?” A weak laugh, threatening tears, and Stel withdraws to slap her cheeks. “I don’t want you grieving me forever, but I can’t stand the thought of you forgetting me and moving on, either, somehow.”  
  
__“Never,” Tira promises.  
  
_She blinks awake with tears in her eyes, and cannot tell if it’s because of the hazy edges of a dream she cannot quite recall, or because of the throbbing pain that rips through her side when she tries to sit up.  
  
She winces, hissing in a breath through her teeth, and presses a hand gingerly to the radiant ache in her ribs.. Not broken, she thinks, but they probably had been before she’d woken up. Whoever it was that had healed her had done good work.  
  
Wounds catalogued, Tira immediately moves onto the next order of business - her sword, and by extension, the memento of Stel she keeps bound to it. It isn’t strapped to her side, and she can’t see it laid out anywhere near the bed she lays in - if it just got thrown in with the rest of the weapons, or was left out in the battlefield to be trampled into the bloodsoaked ground, _someone_ is going to _die_ \-   
  
“You and this old thing,” a voice sighs from behind her, and she freezes, because she _knows_ that voice, and to be hearing it is impossible.  
  
The edges of the dream knit together in her mind, and memory kicks in as she turns slowly, with trepidation, to see Stel standing by her sword, placed against the head of the bed behind her, staring down at her with fondness soaked into eyes that shine like dying stars.  
  
“You’re - ” she starts, and Stel’s eyes widen.  
  
“Oh, by the stars,” Stel breathes. “You can _see_ me.”  
  
Tira has no idea how much time has passed since she awakened. It could be five seconds. It could be an hour, a year.  
  
It could be all of eternity and it wouldn’t matter, she wouldn’t care, because in this moment frozen in time, Stel is with her.  
  
And Stel is _Stel _. Bubbly, bright, with a smile that never dies - apparently, not even when the rest of her did.  
  
“You can _see _ me,” she whispers, and something in her tone curls home in a tiny part of Tira’s heart she hadn’t been aware still beat. “Oh, this is wonderful - I’ve been trying to talk to Hamir for _years _ but he swings from thinking I’m an imagined phantom to some sort of divine punishment. Now that you’re here, if you tell him you can see me too - ”  
  
“Wait,” Tira interjects, throat dry and pulse kicked up to ‘hummingbird.’ “Hamir? He’s - he’s here?” She pauses, and truly takes in the room she woke up in for the first time. “Where _is _ here?”  
  
“Larksnettle Shrine,” Stel is quick to answer. “And of course Hamir is here, who do you think healed you?”  
  
_That’s_ a bed of worms Tira has no intention of lying in just yet (if ever), so she moves immediately on to what seems, to her, to be the far more pressing tidbit of info Stel had just given her.  
  
“_Larksnettle_?” She exclaims, and calls up a map in her mind’s eye. Not quite an impossible distance from the river town she’d been fighting in - but only for someone of able body and mind. Her wounds may be gone now, but the aches _lingered_, and deep, and she knew that when they’d been fresh she’d bled and broken true.  
  
Her life had been in danger, of that she had no doubt. In that miracle dream, Stel had said as much, too.  
  
So. She hadn’t made it to Larksnettle on her own. Obviously. That meant the question was...who had brought her here? How long had she _been _ here, sleeping?  
  
What had the outcome of that battle been?  
  
A pained grimace, and, bracing, Tira swings her legs to the floor and pushes up to stand before she could think twice about it. She steps forward gingerly, and though stabbing pain runs through her, she doesn’t feel anything give, or break. Perfect.  
  
As much as she didn’t like the idea, it was clear there was only one place in Larksnettle she could find her answers - her old friend, estranged ever since Stel’s death broke the ties binding the three of them together.  
  
Hamir.  
  
It’s a name she’s thought of a lot over the years, even though she’s tried very hard not to. It hurts to think about almost as much as thinking about Stel did, just in a very different way.  
  
She isn’t sure how she feels about seeing him again, like this. She can’t deny she’s slightly nervous at how he reacted to seeing _her _ again - they’d parted with anger still sparking between them. He’d healed her, sure, but was this encounter just going to end with round two?  
  
Her mind buzzing, she reaches for her sword, and straps it to her side.  
  
Stel’s ribbon entwined around its hilt is a promise of sun, the hope she’s clung onto since her hope died bloody in the sands all those years ago, and she brushes battleworn fingers against it to draw on its strength.  
  
“I’m with you,” Stel promises, impossible and impossibly lovely behind her. “Always.”  
  
She closes her eyes, for just a second, and then steps forward, to find Hamir.  
  
Regardless of how this will end, Tira will at least be able to say she faced her past with no regrets.

-x-

_Heavy oaken doors creak open in the candlelit dark. He steps into the sanctuary, leather sandals on polished stone, a wooden staff clicking against the tiles.   
  
__He wears the colors of the church-- red and brown, blood and soil, both givers of life. Yet tied around the haft of his staff is a ribbon the color of sunlight. Another life giver. Another life lost. __  
__  
__He approaches the humble little shrine, the elegant, ironwork candelabra. He reaches in and plucks out the little stubs of wax set in the sconces, setting them aside to be melted down and recycled. He replaces them with fresh candles, in three tiers; one at the top, one just below, and seven arrayed around the base. __  
__  
__At this point, he would normally have lit a taper from a wall sconce to light the shrine. But today, in silent defiance of an Empire that’s strictly outlawed its use, he allows the magic in his veins to rise to the surface. __  
__  
__“Light,” he whispers into his cupped palms, and a wisp of flame appears at his fingertips. With this, he lights the candles for evening devotion, in honor of the Nine: the Sun, the Moon, and the seven greatest Stars, the brightest lights in the sky. __  
__  
__He leans his staff against the rail and kneels before the altar, the wisp of magicked flame at his fingers dispelled as he claps his hands together in prayer.__  
__  
__“You really have to do this every night?”__  
__  
__Hamir lets out a patient sigh. There was a time that voice would have startled him. Now, the only surprise is that it _isn’t_ a surprise. __  
__  
__“Are you surprised? They’re _your_ rites.”__  
__  
__“My _grandfather’s_ rites, maybe,” she teases, from above him. __  
__  
__It’s so real. So lifelike. The smile in her voice, the phantom feeling of her arms crossed on top of his head. The ghost on his shoulders, in more ways than one. __  
__  
__Hamir rises to his feet. The girl flickers and skips so that she’s abruptly elsewhere-- now she’s perched on the windowsill, looking like a mirage conjured from the light of sunset through stained glass. Hamir blows out another weary sigh, rubbing at his eyes. __  
__  
__“You shouldn’t be here,” he whispers. “You should be at peace.”__  
__  
__“Why?” Stel muses. “Are _you_?”__  
__  
__Hamir stares down at the paving stones, clenching and unclenching his fists. A sudden bang snaps his gaze to the front door. Stel’s phantom scurries behind him like she did when they were young, warily peeking over his shoulder. __  
__  
__“Do you think you should answer that?” Stel wonders. __  
__  
__Hamir furrows his brow, grabbing his staff from where it was leaning against the altar. There are three sharp knocks at the door. __  
__  
__Just his luck, Hamir thinks as he makes his way down the aisle. Either that’s a hungry fugitive and Hamir hasn’t started making dinner yet, or else he’s facing down an Imperial patrol with nothing but a walking stick. __  
__  
__“Who’s there?” Hamir calls, as he heaves the door open. __  
__  
__What he discovers is a woman prone on the steps of the shrine, and a hooded phantom crouched over her body. __  
__  
__“Hey!” Hamir shouts. __  
__  
__Hamir catches only a glimpse of feminine curves and a painted fox mask under the figure’s hood before it vanishes into the trees. He drops to his knees by the fallen woman, checking for a pulse, running down the list of triage assessment that clerical training has made instinctive--__  
__  
__\--when he sees the ribbon tied around her sword. The twin to his own. __  
__  
__“...Oh, Tira,” Hamir whispers, shaking his head. “What kind of trouble have you gotten into now?”  
  
_“What in the skies have you brought under our roof, Hamir?”  
  
Hamir stands, ramrod straight, squirming under the older man’s gaze. He clears his throat, and clasps his hands formally behind his back.   
  
“...Father, a woman came to our doorstep on the brink of death. Our oath demands that we extend hospitality.”  
  
“Hospitality, yes,” Lucien admits, wearily pinching the bridge of his nose. “But sanctuary? Look at how she’s dressed. She’s no soldier, yet she carries a masterfully crafted sword. At best, she’s a mercenary who lucked into a mighty trophy weapon. At worst, she’s a rebel. And you know what kind of trouble they bring.”  
  
Hamir exhales. “...Yes. I’m aware.”  
  
Lucien rises from his desk, dusting off his robes. He turns to Hamir, his expression softening.   
  
“You were able to save her, weren’t you?”  
  
“Yes,” Hamir murmurs, nodding. “The Light lives in me yet.”  
  
“Yet it gets dimmer every day,” Lucien says gravely. “We serve a shattered church.”  
  
“Where there is light, there is life,” Hamir recites.  
  
“Where there is light, there is life,” Lucien echoes. He takes a deep breath, and sighs. He glances to the icon of the Nine of the wall over his desk-- the sun and moon, haloed within a seven-pointed star. He shakes his head, and makes the sign of the sky over his heart.   
  
“I’m sorry, Brother,” Lucien says quietly. “She cannot stay here.”  
  
The words hang heavy in the air and on Hamir’s shoulders, long after he’s stepped out of Father Lucien’s office. While Hamir’s in the kitchen, idly stirring a pot of soup, his thoughts linger on Lucien’s edict, echoing like the tolling of funeral bells.   
  
An apt analogy. Nine help them if the Empire discovers a Rebel under their roof. But if he sends Tira away, skies know if he’ll ever see her again.   
  
Whether he even wants to see her again, well… the skies only know.

-x-

Tira wouldn't say her walk through the shrine is leisurely - but she's definitely taking it slow. Partly because of the aches that still pang through her, conscious of just how close she came to death, partly because of the tension that fills all of Larksnettle wherever she steps, acolytes wary, suspicious eyes avoiding her.  
  
_Cowards_. She grits her teeth, and ignores them best she can as she moves through room after room, never finding the one person she's actually looking for.  
  
Mostly, though, the reason she moves so cautiously throughout the shrine is something very simple, very human, and very embarrassing to admit: she feels awkward, unwelcome and uncomfortable. Not just by the people of the shrine - she hasn't stepped foot into any house of worship since Stel died. The Nine weren't listening then, and, with the way the Empire has banned magic and twisted their traditional rites - well, they're certainly not listening _now_.  
  
As much as Tira hates the Empire, they have one thing right: the only thing humanity can rely on is itself.  
  
Her stroll isn't all bad, though - unbelievably, still, Stel is with her, humming absentmindedly and swinging her hands through the air as she skips along, like she has no idea how badly every second in her presence, as much of a blessing as it is, is breaking Tira's heart.  
  
"We don't have to be taking the long way around, you know," Stel muses. "I mean, I've been keeping vigil with you, but I always know where Hamir is." Ghostly fingers flick out to a ribbon she can't quite make contact with, and she frowns. "Hmm. I was hoping that, now the both of you could see me, I'd be able to..." She trails off. "Never mind - uh, Tira? Why are you looking at me like that?"  
  
"You mean to tell me," Tira says slowly, "That instead of me wandering around like an idiot, I could have just had _you _lead me to Hamir?"  
  
Stel's expression freezes somewhere between confusion and slowly dawning horror before she flips the switch into hilarity.  
  
Tira's anger melts away almost immediately - Stel's laughter rings out like the peal of a bell, shining as golden as the rest of her, and she isn't sure how she ever managed to live without this.  
  
"I'm sor-r-r-r-y," Stel gasps out between giggles. "I didn't even think - I was just so happy you could see me! It was nice to just walk with you, Tira."  
  
Tira waves her off. "It's fine," she says, and realises she's smiling. "But now that you've let that little detail slip, how about we stop wasting time and just go straight to Hamir?"  
  
Stel's hair bounces as she nods her head vigorously. "I can do that," she says. "Absolutely." She skips forward a few steps, and throws a smile back over her shoulder. "Come on!" She says, and leads the way.  
  
Tira follows, just like she's always done.  
  
The walk isn't long - which makes sense, considering she'd already wandered through most of the shrine; by process of elimination, Hamir had to be close by.  
  
Stel pulls back, a little, as they step closer, and while Tira gets what she's trying to do and appreciates it, she also wishes she wouldn't, because now she can clearly feel the nerves bubbling up inside of her. Her steps slow, and she doesn't quite know what to say.  
  
Of course, Hamir - being Hamir - speaks the first word before she can say anything.  
  
Beyond the shrine’s main altar, the floors aren’t polished stonework but old, creaking wood. He can hear footsteps coming up the corridor behind him. Hamir ladles some soup into a wooden bowl, speaking to empty air.  
  
“You’ve been awfully quiet,” Hamir mutters, thinking it’s Stel’s phantom playing tricks again. “I was waiting for you to say something snappy.”  
  
She parses his words over in her mind, and flicks a glance at Stel, who shrugs with a sad smile and places a finger to her lips, signalling to Tira that Stel has officially checked out of the conversation, even as she lingers.  
  
"You're technically not wrong," she says quietly, "but I don’t think you meant those words for me."  
  
It’s one thing to have seen Tira lying prone and vulnerable on the steps of the shrine. It’s quite another to hear her voice-- so rich, almost raspy despite her small size, yet the cascade of memories it threatens to bring flooding out sends a shiver down Hamir’s spine.   
  
So he goes stiff, and still, and wills those floodwaters back behind the walls. Any crack in his voice is a crack in the dam, and Hamir allows neither. He doesn’t so much as turn around-- as if even the very sight of Tira, after so long, will sweep him out to sea.  
  
“You’re awake,” Hamir says, coldly and carefully. “...Good. If you’re strong enough to walk, you’re strong enough to leave.”  
  
Of course, Hamir’s always had a soft heart. And for all the ice he can muster in his voice, knowing full well the roiling ocean lurking beneath the frozen facade, not even he believes what he’s saying.   
  
Hamir glances down at the bowl of soup in his hands. He’s not so frail that he would do something as dramatic as drop a bowl out of shock. So he takes a deep breath, heaves out a sigh, and meticulously places the bowl on the dining table safely and securely before his hands can begin to shake. He nudges a chair out from under the table with the tip of his boot.   
  
“If I had known you were coming, I would have restocked our spice cabinet,” Hamir murmurs, busying himself with the soup ladle, still not quite able to look Tira in the eyes.   
  
Then he turns around, and a knot clamps tight around his throat as he realizes he’s instinctively poured three bowls.   
  
Hamir goes stock still for one anguished, heart-stopping moment. Finally, he remembers to breathe again, and the world keeps turning, and Hamir sits down to dinner with Tira like he’s done a thousand times before, silently leaving the third bowl untouched between them.

-x-

On the day Estellise vi Lysia died, Corona lost the war.  
  
On the day Stel died, Tira lost her two best friends.  
  
One was immediate, an obsidian blade running Stel through, right before her eyes.  
  
One was slower, more gradual, the chasm of Stel's death between them slowly widening until she realised Hamir was too far from her to reach.  
  
She ignores his harsh words as well as she can, even though they rip through her to hit home - she knows he doesn't mean them. Even after all this time, she knows his tells, and it isn't in how his voice forms ice or his back stiffens like stone. It's in how he avoids looking at her at all.  
  
Sitting down with him, eating in silence, a third bowl placed between them like an offering on an altar, it's almost nostalgic. Almost like being children again, two foundlings taken in by the church full of innocence and ignorance.  
  
_Almost_. This silence isn't companionable. It is tense, and Tira - ever moving, never still - resists the urge to fidget under the weight of it. She will not be the first of them to crack.  
  
Well, she tells herself this, but she ends up being the one to speak first, anyway.  
  
"It's been a while, hasn't it?" She asks, like she hasn't counted the years to the day. "Almost five years now, since we've last seen each other." Almost five years since she'd told him she was leaving, and he'd told her to go fight her war if it made her happy. Told her to never come back.  
  
Her eyes flick to his staff, leaning up against the table next to where he sits. Gold ribbon twines around it, twin to her own.  
  
"You still have it," she says.  
  
“So do you,” Hamir murmurs.   
  
And just like that, there’s nothing more to be said, or at least, nothing that comes out easily. The silence stretches between them, unfathomably deep, and in that unbearable quiet, memories slip through to fill in the gaps: laughter, eager voices, stories about pranks pulled and chores unfinished, about inside jokes and whispered secrets.   
  
Hamir hates it. He hates the swell of feeling that roils in his stomach, rather spoiling his appetite. He hates having to remember the last time he’d looked Tira in the eyes, and had no cold logic or fancy words to hide behind. He’d called her a killer. She’d called him a coward.   
  
It’s easy to hate a monster. It’s easy to hate a stranger.   
  
It’s so much harder to hate a friend.   
  
They’d spent years apart, with a ghost lurking in the gulf between them. But now, the ghost between them was quite literal and very much present.   
  
Stel fixes Hamir with a petulant look, all while she mimes eating dinner, her hand phasing through her spoon. Hamir’s painful memories quickly take a backseat to mild irritation; partially because Stel was being childish, partially because now he’d have to explain to Tira why he was making faces to an empty chair.   
  
Finally, Hamir relents, blowing out a sigh, if only to appease this specter with Stel’s face.   
  
“Your boss brought you here,” Hamir mutters in the tense quiet. “At least, I think it was her, unless there are other rebels roaming around in fox masks. If the Empire isn’t looking for you, they’ll certainly be looking for her.”  
  
Hamir drops his spoon into his bowl rather more loudly than necessary.   
  
“Let me guess,” he says pointedly. “Your cell had completed its mission. They were ready to pull out, unseen. But you just couldn’t walk away without killing a few Imperials. Is that how you got hurt?”  
  
Hamir fixes Tira with a scowl, any affection tightly veiled in bitterness and scorn.  
  
“I almost lost you today,” Hamir muses. “But then, maybe I already lost you long ago.”  
  
Any melancholy Tira feels is swiftly lost under the flashfire burn of rage Hamir's words spark in her.  
  
_How dare he -  
  
_She cuts the thought off, too dangerous to think, even kept to her own mind. She can feel that old argument bubbling up behind her teeth like stale blood, again and _again_, always circular, and she knows she'll never get him to agree with her point of view.  
  
She'll be leaving after this, and will likely never see him again because of it. The fact that he's at this shrine of all shrines is something Tira would have, once upon a time, called divine intervention.  
  
Now, she can see it’s just coincidence, but even so, she doesn't want to ruin it with even more anger. If they part here, forever and for true, she doesn't want said final parting to be as bitter as her eighteenth birthday.  
  
"It's nice to know you have so much faith in me," she mutters, and her soup feels cold in her mouth as she swallows it mechanically, avoiding his gaze. "I don't want to talk about this with you." She really, really doesn't - not with him staring at her like that, towering over her even when seated, that holier-than-thou attitude radiating with every word, every frown, like he isn't only a few months older than her.  
  
He's never understood anything about what reality is like, too wrapped up in the stars burning above to pay any tithe to the broken earth the Empire has made of them.  
  
Watching Stel die hardened Tira to the truth of this world. Hearing about it later allowed Hamir to keep his delusions.  
  
Like she can somehow hear the direction of Tira's thoughts, Stel smiles sadly, and reaches forward to brush her fingers against her arm. Tira can't feel it, but she can see it, and it's the thought that counts.  
  
She draws the line there, pulls back, and reigns in her thoughts.  
  
"Sorry," she mutters, and looks at Stel as she says it. "The soup is good. You've gotten better."  
  
Hamir smiles, despite everything.   
  
“No, it’s not,” he says, pushing his bowl aside, only half-finished. “It’s a meal only starving homeless and clerics with vows of poverty can love.”  
  
The moment of levity is all too brief, and before they can fall back into that pained, tense silence, Hamir blurts out:  
  
“I’m sorry, too. If you had died on that mission, I don’t know if… if I could have taken it.”  
  
The confession burns a hole in Hamir’s chest. And for Hamir, a priest of the Church of Sky’s Light, whose metaphors inevitably turn to celestial bodies, it’s apt. Stel had been the brightest light in his life-- in both their lives. The war took his Sun from him. Could he have lived without his Moon, also? Could he have survived with only the stars to guide him?   
  
This whole train of thought seems both painfully sincere and also mildly blasphemous, comparing his two best friends to the brightest of the Nine.   
  
But maybe it’s still fitting. Because he can see Stel, her hand on Tira’s arm, phasing into points of white light where her ghostly form passes through. And he can see Stel, now, reaching to him and taking his hand, her fingertips shining where they brush against his. She’s just a phantom, and he can’t actually feel her. But he can see the light where they meet.  
  
Stel guides Hamir’s hand to Tira’s on the table. The contact is shockingly warm and full of nostalgia, a novelty to this priest so used to cold halls and distant candlelight.   
  
“I wish…” Hamir begins, and Stel’s amber eyes bore into his, like gazing into the sun. He shudders and looks away, tentatively finding Tira’s own cool blue gaze.   
  
“I wish… we had more time.”  
  
_"I - I wish we, we could have had more ti- ti-i-me togeth -" A wet cough, around a pained grimace she tries to flicker into a smile, teeth stained red as blood wells up in her lungs from where obsidian has pierced her through -  
  
_Tira gags. The hand holding the spoon shakes, and she drops the utensil to the table with a clang. Hamir's hand over her other is warm, not cold at all like her mind had twisted him to be, hearth and summer earth and memories of childhood, and it's his warmth and Stel's light she uses to make sure she isn't pulled under.  
  
She breathes deep, if unsteady, and blinks away from her eyes tears she hadn't realised she'd begun to cry.  
  
"Don't - don't _say _that," she begs, pleads, voice rough and wet. "Don't just wish for something like that's going to do anything. This isn't something you need to leave up to the gods, Hamir. If you want more time with me, just c_ome with me_."  
  
She hadn't been planning to make the offer - she knew it was fruitless, after all - but now that the words are out, she has to acknowledge that it is what she wants.  
  
For Hamir to come with her, the three of them back together again, even if one of them is a ghost.  
  
For Hamir to, maybe just a little bit, choose her over the Nine.  
  
She knows he won't, though, so she clears her throat, and avoids his gaze like she hadn't just laid out her heart to him, and pulls her hand back out of his grip.  
  
"Nevermind," she mutters.  
  
Hamir exhales as Tira pulls her hand away. The hurt lies heavy in the air between them, but there’s something strangely refreshing about it-- it’s sincere. It’s honest.   
  
Hamir slips his hand back into his robe’s wide sleeves, hoping it will let the feeling of Tira’s touch linger longer than the autumn chill.   
  
There are a thousand things Hamir could say right now, and he’s tired of every single one of them. They’ve had this argument before, too many times to count, and Hamir doesn’t want to argue. He just… wants to be with her. No fighting. No strings. But if there ever was a chance for that, he fears that opportunity had passed long ago.  
  
“Where would we go?” Hamir murmurs, his voice mournful rather than an accusation. “Back to fight your war? I would say the Nine brought you to my door tonight, but it wasn’t-- it was The Fox. She brought you here to be healed, to get you back into the fight. One day, knowingly or not, she’s going to march you to your death. And I won’t be part of that. I won’t watch you get sent off to die.”  
  
Then Hamir sees her, smiling gently in the corner of his eyes-- Stel, shining like a goddess. Or a ghost.   
  
“Then maybe you’re exactly what she needs,” Stel chirps. “A healer. A partner.”  
  
A friend, Hamir thinks, but doesn’t dare speak aloud  
  
Stel's words are coaxing, teasing and light, and like aloe after sun, they soothe the rough burn the stinging smoke of Hamir's leave her choking down.  
  
My war, she thinks, bitter, as if the Empire wasn't the one that brought them to this, as if the whole reason she joined up with the Rebellion wasn't because people out there had already created one.  
  
She supposes that's always been Hamir's problem, though - he's never seemed to understand that the war isn't as personal to everyone else as it is to them. Oh, she knows she fights for vengeance, for hate, and make no mistake, others in the Rebellion heed that bloodcall, too -  
  
But it's been six years since Stel died. Six years since Estellise vi Lysia, the last of the sacred line, perished in the sands and the Nine in the sky abandoned them forevermore. Pious and sheltered, Hamir can call this war pointless all he wants; it doesn't change facts. It's been over half a decade, and no one is fighting for king or country at this point. No one fights in the name of the gods.  
  
They fight because the Empire has left them with little else to lose.  
  
Hamir thinks life is something worth protecting. Tira knows she'd rather die free than live bowed, bent, and broken.  
  
"Fox brought me here to be healed, of that I have no doubt," Tira says, and wonders if it was really Fox, or one of her inner circle wearing her mask. She knows that the Fox that had been with her on that disastrous mission had been the real one, but did that mean anything, in the end? No, not at all. "But if you think I'm just some unimportant foot soldier she wants repaired ASAP so she can throw me back out to the imperial wolves - you're _wrong_, Hamir. Every member of the Resistance is the blood of Corona screaming that we will _not _be ignored, trampled into our own earth. Every fighter that dies is mourned, because that's another loss the Empire bleeds from us." She scowls at him. "We're not nameless, faceless masses, and we're not blindly obedient soldiers. We're the people of Corona, and we're drawing our line in the sand."  
  
She's gotten progressively louder, she realises, and would feel quite embarrassed, but she's so wrapped up in the turbulent storm of emotions pouring out of her that any fluster doesn't even have the chance to register.  
  
She slams her hands down on the table, and pushes up, to loom over Hamir as well as she can when she's a solid two heads shorter than he is.  
  
"At some point," she says evenly, "there's no middle ground. You say the Empire will retaliate against civilians. I tell you that they _already are_. There's _nothing _else left to lose here, Hamir. Call me a killer all you want, at least _I _kill with purpose. What do you pray for, Hamir? Each day, when you wake, what do you live for?" She stares down at him, eyes of dark amber glinting in the low light. "You say you won't watch _me _get sent off to die, but are _you _even really living?"  
  
There are a thousand things he could have said, each argument recycled, time and again. But each one of them dies on his lips. They’re just words, excuses, feeble justifications. And tonight has been a strange night. A time to come clean.   
  
“You’re right,” Hamir whispers, and it hurts-- that after all this time, after all their history, this is the one thing he and Tira can agree on. “Ever since Stel… and ever since you left, I...”  
  
Hamir rises to his feet, clutching his staff like a lifeline to his chest. His eyes travel up the wooden haft, past Stel’s ribbon still somehow shining like the sun, to his staff’s brass headpiece-- a crescent, haloed within a seven-pointed star, glinting only dimly with reflected candlelight.  
  
“You’re right, Tira,” Hamir muses. “Maybe I’m already dead.”  
  
The confession is too raw, too painful, for Hamir to do anything but stare down at the floorboards. He doesn’t see how Tira reacts; doesn’t watch the stricken expression flash across Stel’s face, her normally unfailingly cheerful demeanor stopped in its tracks.   
  
Tira almost - _almost _\- regrets what she said. Not really, though - as harsh as her words were, and as much as she hates to have hurt Hamir, she'd hurt him again, one hundred times over or more, if it meant she _finally _got him to see reality.  
  
That doesn't mean hearing him sound so lost and confused doesn't hurt. That doesn't mean she isn't already opening her mouth to - something, she doesn't know. Comfort him? Stel's stricken look tells her she had better.  
  
But harried footsteps cut her off - she knows the stride of a man in the midst of a controlled panic, and reaches down instinctively for her sword.  
  
Hamir lifts his head to see Father Lucien hurrying up the hall, passing heedlessly through Stel’s phantom, unseen.  
  
“Brother Hamir. Young miss,” Lucien says, acknowledging Tira with a nod. “There’s something you need to see.”  
  
The Father leads them to a window, where, looking out, Tira can see a squadron of imperials dressed in gilt and and dull iron.  
  
Hamir mutters a curse and clutches the emblem of Sky’s Light pinning his cloak in place.   
  
“Oh, skies, they’ve started already…”

-x-

The Empire has arrived in Larksnettle Village. They stand arrayed in the village square, rows of grunt troopers with daggers on their hips and light crossbows against their shoulders. Their helmet faceplates are wrought-iron skulls, rendered hellish in the light of their torches.    
  
“Listen up, you unwashed curs!” barks their sergeant, his rank denoted by the horns adorning his helmet. “Six hours ago, the Magistrate of Lark’s Crossing, appointed by the Imperial Senate, was found dead in his manor, along with a few dozen of his personal guards. This shameful attack was orchestrated by the terrorist known as ‘The Fox’, and her associates. Someone here knows where to find her. If that person steps forward, they will be rewarded for their contribution to the security of the Empire. But if you do not give us the information we seek… we shall have no choice but to take it by force.”

-x-

Tira hears the words of the horned demon leading his troupe of devils into a sacred land their blood soaked laurels have no right to rest in, and hears her blood pounding in her ears. Rage sings a sweet song in her veins, red and hot, and she can taste thick copper in the back of her throat.  
  
She tells herself to cool it. There are innocent people here. Hamir is here.  
  
Her hand still rests on her sword, and under her fingers the silk of Stel's ribbon is soft and cool on the hilt. She strokes it once, delicate touches, makes up her mind, and makes to leave the room.  
  
"I'm going down there," she said. "They're looking for a fox, and so I'll give them one."  
  
Hamir freezes in his tracks. He stares at Tira’s retreating form, torn between grief and honest exasperation. What did he just tell her about marching off to her death?  
  
Stel makes a pained noise of protest, but Tira's already made up her mind. She might not be Fox, but she is _fox_, and trickery is the strength of their cell.  
  
Her grip around her blade tightens.  
  
The beast that killed Stel should have made to take his sword from her corpse when he ran, but he didn't, and now it's Tira's, and she wields it in Stel's name and honour - there's just something so satisfying about turning such a powerful and expensive weapon of the Empire back against them.  
  
"I'm sorry for bringing my troubles to your doorstep, Father," she says. "Don't worry. I'll be taking my leave now."  
  
As she walks out into the hall, she can't bring herself to look back at Hamir.  
  
“You’re not just going to let her leave, are you?” Stel asks, peeking warily from behind Hamir’s arm.  
  
Hamir blinks, his wits returning at the sound of Stel’s voice.. He swallows hard, scurrying after Tira as she makes for the front doors.  
  
“Tira!” he calls. “Tira!”

-x-

The masked Imperial sergeant paces up and down the line of his men, staring down the gathered crowd of silent, anxious villagers from behind his faceplate’s dark, empty eye sockets. The villagers exchange nervous glances, but say nothing, lingering by the steps of their shops, their homes.   
  
“No one?” the sergeant asks. “Will no one step forward? Do you truly not know the Fox’s whereabouts? Or are you keeping silent out of some misplaced patriotism? These insurgents don’t care about you. They’re killers, all. As long as they resist, the fighting will never cease, and you people will continue to be caught in the crossfire. So speak up. Let us remove the threat from your homes.”  
  
Silence. The sergeant sniffs, haughty.   
  
“Very well,” he says. He turns to his men, barking orders. “Search the town! Shoot anyone who resists. Remember, good people of Larksnettle! We are here for your protection! You have nothing to fear… if you have nothing to hide.”

-x-

Blah blah blah blah_ blah blah blah_ \- an endless cacophony of white noise falls from the Sergeant's lips, and Tira steps out from the safety and shadow of the shrine and into the cold and unyielding light of Luna's embrace.  
  
She's long since stopped believing the Nine hear their prayers, but do they still watch their suffering? Does the Moon above them now watch her march with her head held high and find her worthy? Or pitiable?  
  
"Please," Stel whispers, gold and silver shimmering together, the only sun Tira has ever needed. "Please, Tira, _please _don't do this." The pain in how she begs is almost enough to have Tira wavering, but - too late. She's been noticed.  
  
"You were looking for me?" She calls out. The dead silence that infects the place lingers so still and heavy that her words echo out like proclamation. "Here I am: your fox."  
  
“Tira!”  
  
Hamir bursts out onto the shrine steps, but he’s too late-- Tira has already announced herself, and has the eyes of an entire Imperial platoon upon her. He glances behind him and sees, to his chagrin, a pair of acolytes fearfully tugging the shrine doors closed.   
  
Hamir scoffs. Sanctuary for all in need, indeed…  
  
The sergeant steps forward, looking Tira up and down. A small, limber, pretty little thing. A guerilla, not a soldier. But the pilfered obsidian sword on her hip says everything he needs to know.   
  
He smiles, bemused, beneath his mask.   
  
“Brave enough to die standing, are you?” he sniffs. He glances to his men. “Take her.”  
  
When Tira steps out into the open, she does it without fear. Even Hamir's voice from behind her, wrecked with panic, cannot make her waver. She knows how this will go: they will take her in, drag her to the mockery they've made of the Capitol, each seat taken by an imperial governor more corrupt than the last, and execute her as publicly as possible, to show their people that they're winning.  
  
That's why she still has her sword cinched to her side, though she'd been tempted to hand it over to Hamir for safekeeping - expensive, elaborate, and clearly stolen, her trophy is the only proof she has of her identity as a high ranking rebel worth her weight in bounty. She hopes she'll be able to toss it back to Hamir at some point before she's chained - the ribbon, at least, she doesn't want to lose.  
  
But apparently, either the Empire's go-to for high profile criminals has changed, this particular sergeant is an idiot, or something about what Fox has done specifically while Tira was out of it means that death isn't a sentence in a government house she can slip out of easily, other rebels as hidden agents within the walls of the Capitol in reach to aid her - it's here, and it's now.  
  
Two troopers step forward, taking aim. Hamir reaches for Tira, fear surging through his chest--  
  
He flinches as a crossbow bolt zips over his head. A trooper’s shot went wide, and now he’s stumbling, falling…  
  
There’s a dense, wet impact. Hamir drops to the ground and pulls Tira down with him, sheltered in his arms, as a second crossbow bolt thuds into the shrine doors and a second Imperial trooper hits the ground, an arrow in their eyes.   
  
Villagers cry out and run for cover, their doors and windows shutting tight. The Imperial sergeant ducks right as a third arrow comes whistling his way-- it glances off his horned helmet and skewers the man behind him. The trooper howls in pain from the arrow in his gut. The sergeant grimaces in disgust and silences the trooper’s wretched cries with his sword.   
  
“Return fire!” he barks. “Return fire!”  
  
His platoon take aim with their crossbows, hunting for targets in the dark. But there’s none to be found-- just the barest flicker of shadow, a hooded phantom in a fox mask, lurking on the shrine roof.   
  
An explosion rips through the Imperial lines, flattening half a dozen men and sending the others scurrying for cover. Two more hand bombs go off in the village square, throwing his troops into further disarray. The sergeant snarls in frustration, fixing his gaze on Tira.   
  
“You!” he growls, sword raised. But another blast hurls him off his feet, a thick cloud of smoke engulfing footman and fugitive alike.   
  
In the chaos that ensues Tira can hardly register Hamir tugging them both down to the ground. The imperial bristles with anger as smoke clouds the otherwise clear night, lit by the seven brightest stars and their mother, the moon.  
  
Hope is a tremulous thing, fluttering in Tira's throat, as she spots a familiar silhouette darting through the smog to lay a hand on her arm, deadly bow and poisoned bolt aimed dead at the Sergeant's heart.  
  
She does not hesitate. She looses her shot.  
  
"Come, Sister," she says, quietly, "before they stop panicking over losing their head."  
  
Tira stands with Fox when she pulls her up, but doesn't step forward until she's dragged Hamir with her.  
  
"He's coming with us," she says firmly. He doesn't get a choice about this - he'd called her name, he'd shielded her, all in the view of imperials who had heard her proclaim she was fox. If she left him here, she left him here to die.  
  
She can't see Fox's eyes through her mask, but she can feel the weight of her assessing stare as she rests in on Hamir, and hopes against hope that just this once, things will be okay.

-x-


	2. Last Wish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A halfway place, a flower, and a promise.

-x-

It all happens so fast.  
  
One moment, he’s chasing after Tira as she marches resolutely to her death. The next, they’re dropping to the paving stones as crossbow bolts and hand bombs whistle and bang overhead. Now, Hamir scarcely has time to register the warmth of Tira’s body against his before they’re moving again, following in the footsteps of a masked woman who walks without making a sound.  
  
Hamir knows now, of all times, is no time for small talk. But with Stel’s phantom clinging to his arm, curiosity glinting in her eyes, and having been dragged from his home in the middle of the night, one might forgive a little anxiety on Hamir’s part.  
  
Of course, Hamir immediately regrets attempting to converse with a spy.  
  
“Are you The Fox?” he asks.  
  
“I’m no one,” the hooded woman replies. “Are you one of us?”  
  
Hamir, makes a face. He shares a glance with Tira, and doesn’t know what to say.  
  
The Fox (or perhaps merely _ a _ Fox, if there were more than one) leads them out of the village square to a rundown farmstead on the very edge of town, where the panicked shouts of the brutalized Imperial unit are but a distant memory. Hamir watches in fascination, despite himself, as the Fox pulls a peculiar key from her belt: a key ending in a flat square of metal, with no notches cut for the tumblers.  
  
She draws the dagger from her belt and uses it to scribe a sigil into the flat of the key, glowing faintly in the moonlight. The key turns in the lock, the door creaks open, and the Fox scrapes her knife against the key until it’s smoothed flat again.  
  
‘Safehouse’ would be giving the little shack a bit too much credit. Its interior was little more than a closet, a cot, and a wooden trunk-- presumably a cache of supplies for any rebel needing somewhere to go to ground.  
  
Stel’s phantom mimes sitting on the cot, swinging her legs like a child. Hamir joins her, warily watching the Fox as she takes Tira’s hands in hers with a squeeze-- a gesture far too warm and familiar for a ruthless terrorist, Hamir muses. She speaks quietly, urgently, her words meant for Tira and Tira alone.  
  
“I’ll circle back around and make sure whatever’s left of that patrol gets off your tail. You should be safe here, but only briefly. I would leave by first light.”  
  
The Fox glances towards Hamir on the cot. Satisfied he isn’t listening in, she continues.  
  
“The cell regroups at Lark’s Crossing,” she whispers. “Be safe, Sister.”  
  
And just like that, she’s gone, just another shadow in the trees beyond their little cabin.   
  
Tira watches Fox leave with a stab of trepidation, a waver of melancholy. Her hands are still warm from where Fox had held firm and gripped tight when she turns back to Hamir and Stel, tall and tiny, one with all the tension in the world seemingly weighing him down, the other as carefree in death as she was in life.  
  
“What in the skies just happened?” Hamir demands, his arms crossed, his staff held tight in the crook of his arm.   
  
"Fox saved us," she says, blunt because thinking about how close she came to death is enough to have her shaking again. She reaches up an unsteady hand to tug anxiously at the hair thrown over her shoulder.  
  
She still doesn't know why the imperials had been so eager to kill her, and fast. For the past two years, a rebel death outside of battle has always been a public spectacle, right in the heart of the capital, on the polished steps of the Capitol. An example of where rebellion always leads-- a long walk and a short rope.  
  
She suspects that those answers will have to wait until she's back in the Crossing, back with her cell once more, and stands up to prepare for their journey.  
  
There's food in the cupboards, she knows, provisions - right next to the poisons Snake makes sure each cache keeps at hand, labelled in the cipher only the high ranking rebels know.  
  
Tira doesn't know if she's actually meant to know the cipher, herself - she doesn't really have any sort of rank to claim, because authority and notoriety rarely go hand in hand - but Fox had made sure she learned it forever ago.  
  
"We can stock up here and rest for the night," she says. "Leave at dawn for the Crossing."  
  
Carefully placing packets of moon-pale powder into her bag - crushed Tears of Selene, the flowers that grow only along the river said to be the lifeblood of Luna's lost twin that cuts through the heart of Corona; a fast acting death in high doses, a potent sedative when used sparingly - Tira looks back over her shoulder at the weirdly silent peanut gallery, and absentmindedly adds a crossbow and bolts to her bag. "Hamir? Are you okay?"  
  
He stares at her from the doorway, his staff clutched tight in both hands. While Tira was packing for a journey, business as usual, he had been trying to quiet the trembling in his fingers. But even with his fists clenched until his knuckles are pale, his hands continue to shake. He lets out a shuddering breath, raises his staff and stamps it into the floorboards with a bang, shockingly loud in the enclosed space.  
  
“Am I okay? Am I okay?!” Hamir seethes, his eyes flashing in the moonlight. “What the fuck just happened, Tira? What have you _ done _ ?”  
  
“H-Hey…” Stel murmurs. “Don’t get mad at Tira--”  
  
“I’ll get mad at whoever I damn well please!” Hamir snaps. “Just a few hours ago, I was a priest of a rural parish just keeping my head down and minding my own business. But you! You show up on my doorstep, battered and bloody, an object lesson in what it means to serve the Rebellion! Once I heal you, what do you do? You march right back out into the fight! And now? Now, you’ve made us fugitives!”  
  
“The Empire made us fugitives,” Stel pleads. “The rebels--”  
  
“...saved us, yes, I know, and don’t think I’m not grateful!” Hamir growls. “But what do we do now? Are we just supposed to go running into their arms in gratitude? Shall we have a nice, leisurely riverside retreat with your fellow spies and saboteurs?!”  
  
“Is this what you wanted?” Hamir demands, stabbing a finger into Tira’s chest. “Is this what you wanted all along, to have me join you on this mad crusade? Did you think we might make amends, now that the Empire’s after both of us? Did you think being wanted by the Empire would give us some common ground?”  
  
Hamir stands and seethes for a long moment. But then he sees Stel, clinging to his arm with a pleading look in her eyes, shining white where her form phases through his. Hamir, blinks, realizing he’s backed Tira against a wall. He pulls his hand away, staring at the floorboards. In an instant, all his fury drains away, leaving his next words haggard and mournful.  
  
“Out of all the ways I could have seen you again, why…”  
  
Hamir trails off with an exhausted, defeated sigh. He turns, briefly glancing towards the cot in the corner, only big enough for one. Wordlessly, he unclasps his cloak and lays it out on the floorboards.  
  
“...I am going to bed,” Hamir mutters, too tired to fight anymore.  
  
Tira watches Hamir stalk to the cot with heavy eyes and a heavy heart. Even now, he pointedly lays on the floor atop his cloak, leaving the cot to her. So noble. So _ righteous _ , even in his frustration. Scathing words light a fire on her tongue, but she swallows them down. A screaming argument will only draw imperial attention.  
  
Stel looks absolutely stricken, though, and that is something she _ can _ do something about. She waves, to get her attention, and jerks her chin to the door. Quietly, they both slip out into the night.  
  
"He shouldn't have said all of that," Stel says the instant the door swings shut. "He's wrong and it's unfair. None of what happened was your fault!" A crease between her eyes, worry and concern, and Tira smiles bitterly.  
  
"I know that," she reassures her. "I didn't drag myself to Larksnettle, and when I made to leave, I didn't ask him to come running up behind me. He made the decision not to turn me away - he could have, you know. The church talks a good game about sanctuary for all but it's common knowledge that with some...undesirables, the length of their faith is to tell them their life is in the Sky's hands, and they'll either die or live by divine will. And he made the decision to follow me, too - he didn't have to come marching out, screaming my name in front of a horde of imperials." Her hand aches to ruffle Stel's hair. "He did all of that of his own volition, and he knows it. That's why he's so angry. Not at me, at himself."  
  
Stel doesn't look very reassured. If anything, her perplexed frown deepens. "Was he right, though?" She asks, small and quiet. "Is this what you wanted, Tira?"  
  
"Don't be stupid," Tira shoots back automatically. "Did I want Hamir with me again? Did I want him to wake up to reality? Yes, of course. But did I want to ruin his life? Rip him from the home he chose? Of course not. He made his choice and I made mine. I've always wanted to get him to change his, not drag him unwillingly into mine." She sighs. "He'll be calmer come dawn. It's _ Hamir _ ."  
  
"He won't be calmer," Stel frets. "He'll be repressing it. He's _ Hamir _ ."  
  
"Same difference," Tira says, "I don't know if you've noticed, but I doubt calm is something that really exists for either of us, these days."  
  
Dark sorrow bleeds into moon-pale eyes. "That isn't fair," Stel whispers.  
  
Tira closes her eyes. "Life rarely is."  
  
Hamir lies awake on the floorboards, staring up at the ceiling, his hands clasped over his stomach. He can hear Tira outside, talking animatedly to a phantom wearing Stel’s voice.  
  
That’s what they’ve been reduced to, now that the Empire had taken the kingdom. Two fugitives, hiding in the countryside. A priest uprooted from his parish. A rogue, talking to a ghost.  
  
This tiny rebel safehouse is just on the outskirts of Larksnettle, and it’s already the furthest he’s been from the shrine in years.  
  
Hamir blows out a sigh, gazing up at the ceiling.  
  
“I can’t believe this,” Hamir murmurs to empty air. “Journeying into the wild. Out of my element. Entrusting my survival to a terrorist.”  
  
“How about a friend?” he can already imagine Stel asking. So simple. So sincere.  
  
_ A friend.  
  
_ Is that what Tira is, after all this time? After everything that’s happened?  
  
Hamir scowls, and rolls onto his side. He heaves a sigh, closing his eyes. He pushes aside the whirlwind of the evening’s events, the insides of his eyelids dark like a night without a star in the sky.  
  
For once in his life, Hamir doesn’t pray.  
  
He dreams…

-x-

In the darkness, light.  
  
The cramped, uncomfortable farmstead falls away into darkness, replaced by the gentle embrace of a grassy field. Hamir is laying in the grass, hands out at his sides. To his left lies Tira, their little fingers curled in a childhood promise. But to his right lies empty air.  
  
Hamir bolts upright with a start, taking in his surroundings. He and Tira are laying in a field of flowers, white and gleaming, blooming around them like stars in the sky.  
  
Long ago, before the Nine rose into the sky, they walked upon the Earth, among their believers. They say that Luna had a sister once-- Selene, blessed of the moon. But tragedy befell her, and the stories differ what it was. Some say Selene was killed; others, that she was kidnapped; some, that something twisted her soul and caused her to betray the Nine.  
  
Whatever the cause, Selene was lost, cast into the darkness.  
  
Luna wept at the loss of her beloved sister, filling an entire river with her grief. And along the banks of that river, white flowers bloomed, in silent remembrance of the lonely and the lost.  
  
Selene’s Tears. Lunar Tears, shining white even when the stars are veiled.  
  
The Church of Sky’s Light no longer recognizes Selene’s tragic fall, the notion of Luna having a sister, or even the idea of there being a time when the Nine walked the earth before rising to take their places in the sky. But the stories remain, for those who remember them.  
  
Hamir knows the tales, for curiosity’s sake if not devotion. But none of that matters now--  
  
Because Stel is here. Perched on a stone and gazing wistfully up at the sky, wearing a dress the color of sunrise. Like the Lunar Tears blooming around them, Stel’s hair shines white with moonlight, even as clouds cover the skies above.  
  
Stel turns. For a moment, she looks absolutely stunning-- radiant, dignified, just like the Queen she never had the chance to be. But a moment later, that perfect poise breaks into teasing, impish laughter, and it’s this sight that makes Hamir’s heart catch in his throat.  
  
“Stel…” he breathes, but catches himself. He looks away.  
  
“...This is a dream,” Hamir murmurs, his voice heavy with grief.  
  
Hamir's voice, echoing, as if through water. Tira stirs, slowly, air around her warm and heady with the scent of Lunar Tears.  
  
The scent of _ Stel _ .  
  
She jolts up, suddenly aware she lies in a field she's never seen before, arranged in a triangle with her two cornerstones on each side; Stel on her left and Hamir on her right.  
  
"This is a dream," she says wonderingly, and thinks back to how she'd slept while injured. There, Stel had stepped into bloody memory. Here, she pulls them into her serene rest. "We're _ dreaming _ ."  
  
The three of them, together, and Tira remembers something amazing from that previous dream.  
  
She and Stel had _ touched.  
  
_ She holds her hands out - one for Stel to grasp, one for Hamir. In that moment, all her anger is forgotten, and it's like they're all fifteen again - Hamir with the phantom of long hair falling over his shoulder, cut short after Stel's death, Tira's arms unscarred.  
  
"Death and dreams are two sides of the same coin," Stel breathes, eyes wide, as she gets the message Tira is trying to hand her. "Here...I can _ feel _ you. Both of you."  
  
Hamir sees Tira’s hand, reaching out for his. But, knowingly or not, he doesn’t take it. He’s too fixated on the sight of Stel, her silver hair shining like a crown. A memory is seared in his mind’s eye: Stel, on the cusp of her sixteenth birthday, playful, bright-eyed, frozen in time-- the last moment Hamir ever saw her alive. But this Stel is a woman grown-- the Queen she should have been.  
  
“This--” Hamir chokes out, clenching a fist. “This isn’t real.”  
  
“This is the Dreaming,” Stel admits. “But it is very, very real.”  
  
“No,” Hamir gasps past the knot in his throat. “No, this isn’t…”  
  
Hamir shudders, tears pricking his eyes. Because where Tira sees cherished memories and an honored past, Hamir can see only a stolen future.  
  
“No!” he cries out, his hands shaking. “You shouldn’t be here. You-- You should be at peace...”  
  
“You keep telling me that,” Stel smiles, sorrowful. “But I won’t be at peace. Not until you two find it yourselves.”  
  
Stel steps forward, and gently lays a hand upon Hamir’s cloak pin. In reality, he knows, he’d unpinned his cloak to lay down as a blanket, and this discrepancy is just another sign that this isn’t real, this _ can’t _ be real--  
  
\--but Stel’s so close. She’s so close, and warm, and though she’s taller and more mature than he remembers, that playful, impish smile is so much like her, so undeniably Stel. The flood of memories lurch through his core and stop short, dammed by the knot in his throat. He can’t speak, can hardly breathe.  
  
Because Stel’s here. She’s right here. And she is beautiful, even for a ghost.  
  
“You serve the Nine, but you are a priest of Sol, first and foremost,” Stel begins, delicately tracing the emblem of Sky’s Light pinning Hamir’s cloak in place. “You serve the hearth-lighter, the life-giver. The light that guides the waking world. But this is The Dreaming; the domain of Luna, the light of death, of dreams… of wishes.”  
  
Stel reaches down, plucking a Lunar Tear from the grass below. It’s petals are still closed tight, having yet to bloom. She looks up, meeting the eyes of her two dearest friends in turn, holding the closed bud to her heart.  
  
“I’ve come to you, now, so you can grant my last wish.”  
  
Tira can feel her heart beating out of her chest, she's pretty sure. Can taste the copper of it thrumming at the base of her throat.  
  
Hamir's rejection, wordless as it was, hurt - as it always does. His panic afterwards worries her, but all that negativity is buried under the soft everglow of Stel's next words.  
  
Killed unfairly, so early, her life bled out on the sands even as she clung to Tira, clung to life, Tira knows what it is Stel has come to them to request, she's sure of it.  
  
"You want us to bring you back," she says, and her spirit is all but vibrating in excitement. "You want us to bring you _ back _ ."  
  
Her voice breaks on the last words. Stel blinks, and lets out a nervous laugh. "That's - not it, exactly?" She hedges. "It's more like -" She blinks again, and her gaze slides away from Tira. "Hamir?" She asks gently.  
  
_ Bring her back? Is that even possible?  
  
_ As Stel’s eyes flit to his, Hamir turns, studying Tira in the Dreaming’s eerie half-light. The mere notion of bringing Stel back had lit such a fire in Tira’s eyes. To have that fire dimmed by doubt…  
  
Hamir blows out a sigh, meeting Tira’s eyes.  
  
“...That’s not what she’s saying at all,” Hamir says quietly. “Look around us. She’s trapped here, in this halfway place. She needs to be laid to rest. Properly. And we need to work together to do it. Isn’t that right, Stel?”  
  
Stel quirks her lips in confusion. She chuckles, sheepish. “Not… exactly. Um. Sorry. That’s not quite it, either.”  
  
Hamir’s eyebrows knit in exasperation. “What is it, then? What do you want, exactly?”  
  
“I just want _ us _ back,” Stel says gently, holding her Lunar Tear over her heart. “I want us to be together.”  
  
Hamir laughs, mirthless. “Oh, sure, let’s go ahead and make a suicide pact--”  
  
“Don’t say that!” Stel snaps, and suddenly she’s glowering, a finger stabbed into Hamir’s chest. She has to get up on her tiptoes to look him in the eyes, but nonetheless, Hamir recoils, bowing his head in apology.  
  
“...Don’t say that,” Stel echoes, turning from Hamir and locking eyes with Tira. “I don’t want you to die for me. I want you to live. And I want the three of us to be what we were always supposed to be.”  
  
“What’s that, exactly?” Hamir mutters.  
  
Stel takes a deep breath, and lets it out slow. She stares down at the Lunar Tear in her hands-- a flower of death and dreams. A wish unfulfilled.  
  
“Whole,” she breathes.

-x-

_ Whole, _ Stel says, like it's truly just that easy. Maybe it is. When it's her saying it, Tira sure wants to believe that it could be.  
  
Their halcyon days spent together are long since dead, nothing more than a fading, fleeting dream. The reality of their lives tore them apart a lifetime ago, and they never quite managed to put their pieces back together. Without Stel to help fill in the cracks, truthfully, they never really tried.  
  
Now, though - Tira's anger is not gone. It will never be gone, she knows, not even once the war is over and Corona is theirs again. Her anger, her hatred - it is a tempest, and it is only in the middle of it, the eye of her own storm, that she feels anything even close to okay. Or calm. Her anger is her shield against grief and despair.  
  
It's not gone, just because a miracle has appeared before her, just because Hamir is close at hand, warm and solid and still Hamir despite everything, where most days, she isn't sure who 'Tira' is anymore.  
  
Not gone. Just...shifted.  
  
"Whole," she murmurs, and Stel brightens like the sun she's always been to Tira.  
  
"Together," she confirms.  
  
"I..." Tira speaks without thinking, and then hesitates, because -  
  
_ Hamir.  
  
_ Laying your heart out is hard. Laying it out when you're sure of rejection...that's harder.  
  
"I want to try," she says - implores, really. "I want to try," she presses, turning to Hamir and not Stel. "Can you look me in the eyes and say that you don't?"  
  
She's still determined to find a way to bring Stel back, and she's horrified by what he'd said before; lay her to rest? When they'd just got her back? Why!?  
  
But she bites those words back, and tries for a smile through her pain and her tears.  
  
"C'mon, Hamir," she teases. "All those years of complaining about us leaving you behind when we went to do 'girl stuff,' and now you're trying to get away from us?"  
  
A girlish giggle and a soft, warm touch: Stel leans over Tira's shoulders, and loops her arms around her waist. "Hamir," she says, and Tira can't see her face or her eyes, but she can hear the pleading in her tone. "For Tira. For me. Please?"  
  
Hamir stares at them, his heart heavy in his chest. Tira, a spectre from his past, returning wounded to his doorstep to reopen some old wounds of his own. Stel, a ghost on her shoulders, a symbol of loss, of grief, of childhood innocence and a shattered past.  
  
“Come on, Hamir,” Stel urges, offering her hand. “For us?”  
  
Hamir blows out a sigh. He reaches takes Stel’s hand in both of his. He glances up, meeting her amber eyes, before his gaze comes to rest, more uneasily, on Tira’s.  
  
“For us,” he whispers, and the world goes white.

-x-

Hamir wakes up.  
  
The old resistance safehouse resolves around him in a bloom of pale wood. The floorboards creak as he sits up, stretching, pressing his back against Tira’s bed. Belatedly, he becomes aware of Tira stirring beside him, her legs swinging down over the side of the cot. Briefly, he has the frankly absurd thought of laying his head down on her lap, but he pushes the juvenile thought aside. Instead, he rises off the floor, and takes a seat on the cot beside her.  
  
Their eyes meet, briefly, before they both fix their gazes straight forward. The sun peeks over the horizon, bathing the farmstead in the warmth of Sol’s brilliance, sending shadows scurrying across the walls.  
  
Sol. Hamir’s patron among the Nine. Hearth-lighter. Life-giver. Domain over the real, the solid, the living.  
  
Hamir and Tira sit on the cot, a pointed gap between them. But even in the sunlight, Hamir can see her, lingering in the space between-- Stel, the faint, luminous ghost not even Sol can banish completely. She’s smiling, her hands on Hamir and Tira’s knees, bridging the gap between them like she always has.  
  
If the somber quiet wasn’t enough to convince them that last night’s vision was no ordinary dream, then Stel, lingering between them, dispels any doubt. She’s faint, almost transparent in the sunlight. They can’t feel her touch, and when she moves her lips, she makes no sound. She’s a mere ghost of the woman she was in Luna’s domain, but she’s still here. Still Stel.  
  
Hamir takes a deep breath, and lets it out slow.  
  
“Let me be clear,” he says slowly, firmly. “Let me be clear, so there is no misunderstanding: I want to lay Stel to rest. Not because I think resurrecting her is ‘blasphemy’, or even impossible. But because things are different now. We’re different, now. We can’t go back to the way things were. And we can’t move on, either. Not until we finish this.”  
  
Hamir turns, catching Tira’s eyes.  
  
“...I know that’s not what you want to hear,” he admits. “But it’s the truth. Or at least my truth. We may not have the same idea as to what seeing this through will entail. We may not always agree. But I will always, _ always, _ be honest with you. And I want to try, Tira. I want to see this through, for Stel’s sake, and yours.”  
  
Where The Dreaming had been neither warm nor cold, reality seeps with both, the damp chill of the early morning being chased away by the rising sun's heat.

-x-

Tira doesn't so much 'wake' as simply slip from one realm to the other - she blinks, and closes her eyes in The Dreaming, and opens them once more curled on her side, the haze of Stel at her side like a mirage between her and Hamir.  
  
He looks down at her, and their eyes meet. His expression is set, his jaw tight with the tension that runs through him. When he speaks, his voice is firm.  
  
His words are aggravating, and normally, Tira would have already felt her blood boiling by now...but some of that dreamlike calm lingers, soothed by Hamir's reassurance that he's _ staying with them, _ even as he's telling her that, one day, this dream will end.  
  
(He's wrong, about that, because she isn't going to let him, but she doesn't say that out loud - she isn't _ stupid _ , for all that she's hotheaded, and while she's caught in this calm, she wants to stay in it. She doesn't want to argue with Hamir - not again, not now.)  
  
"We're _ going _ to see this through," she says instead, truth bled out of grief and determination. She reaches across the shimmer of Stel, offering her a faint smile, to take Hamir's hand in her own before he can move it away. He's as warm as the dawn. "Everything changes, today," she says, almost giddy, "It's going to take a while, Hamir, but we're going to fix this - we're going to make things how they're meant to be."  
  
The Empire, broken. Corona, restored.  
  
Stel. _ Alive.  
  
_ There's faint suspicion coiling in Hamir's eyes - of course, he knows her, even after all this time, and he isn't going to just believe she's just given up on the idea of bringing Stel back without a fight, no matter how well she talks around it, but, miracle of miracles, he doesn't argue with her.  
  
She squeezes the hand she grips. "For Stel," she says. "For -" _ For everything that we've lost. _ "For everyone that isn’t lost yet," she whispers around a tight throat. "I know you don't like to fight, but - that's a banner to fly, isn't it? A hope to bear arms for?"  
  
Hamir knows the look in Tira’s eyes. Even after all this time, he can see it-- the passion, the resolve, the stubborn will. Once Tira’s set her mind on something, no one can talk her out of it, least of all Hamir. And while he’s spent years telling himself he’s wanted nothing more than to keep his head down and live a life of quiet piety and service, there is something… invigorating about the fire in Tira’s eyes.  
  
The Empire broken. Corona restored. Stel, alive.  
  
Three grand ambitions, and every one of them would take a miracle. But, as Tira takes his hand in his, warming him to his core in an instant, for the first time since Tira walked back into Hamir’s life, the future seems bright. Warmer, somehow. Like something worth chasing, rather than simply waiting for it to arrive.  
  
Stel’s form flickers between them like a mirage. She places a hand over theirs, smiling like the sun. Hamir can’t help but smile back.  
  
“For Stel,” he says with a nod, squeezing Tira’s hand. “...So. What’s our next step?”  
  
Tira glances up, blowing a stray lock of hair out of her eyes.  
  
“I have a plan. You’re not going to like it,” Tira admits. “We can’t just go from bolt hole to bolt hole. We can’t hide from the Empire forever. If they found us all the way in Larksnettle, they’ll find us again, We need to find safety in numbers. We need to regroup with the Fox cell.”  
  
“Throwing our lot in with insurgents,” Hamir sighs, but doesn’t force the issue. “Where are they, then?”  
  
“Everywhere,” Tira says mysteriously. “And nowhere.”  
  
Hamir gives her a withering look. “...Tira.”  
  
“Lark’s Crossing,” Tira replies. “Right down the river.”  
  
Hamir nods. He gives Tira’s hand one last squeeze. He gets to his feet, retrieves his staff from where he’d left it leaning against the doorframe, and taps it against the floorboards. He turns towards Tira, a silhouette haloed by the rising sun. He bows his head, and gestures to the door.  
  
“Lead the way.”

-x-

Tira tells herself she has no reason to be feeling nervous.  
  
She's been repeating the words over in her mind for almost an hour, now. It's yet to make her actually feel less nervous.  
  
_ Lead the way, _ Hamir had said, and with a bluster and confidence she didn't feel, she'd done just that. It was kind of ridiculous, really - she'd led plenty of missions for the Resistance in the past, so a relatively short trip with her two childhood friends shouldn't seem like the most daunting thing in the world.  
  
Except it is, because one of those friends is the friendliest ghost Tira has ever encountered - fight for the Resistance long enough, and you'll encounter a vengeful shade at some point; the Empire hadn't been _ gentle _ in their takeover - and the other is. Well.  
  
Hamir.  
  
He's quiet, as they walk - it could be because Tira had warned him they'd need stealth, what with the chance of Imperials still crawling around, but there's also a part of her that's just certain he's being surly. Maybe because of the heat - it's bad enough on its own, usually, but along the banks of the Selene, the air is humid and sticky. _ Probably _ because of her.  
  
Stel walks between them, and when Tira tries to subtly glance back at Hamir for the umpteenth time, she catches her eyes and giggles. Hamir, frowning at his feet, looks up at them with narrowed eyes.  
  
Or maybe, he's just looking at Tira like that, straight through Stel.  
  
"What happened to being quiet, hmm?" He raises a brow, arch and with that itch of holier-than-thou. Aggravation skitters across Tira's spine, but she refuses to rise to the bait she knows Hamir isn't actually dangling - he isn't trying to rile her up, he'd just always been good at _ doing _ it regardless. It's a wonder they'd ever become friends, as children, considering the fact that about half of the things he said made her want to punch him.  
  
"I'm pretty sure no one but the two of you can see me," Stel says, reminding Tira of just how and why she and Hamir had come to be - and remain - as friends. "That probably goes for hearing, too. Anyone else...would have to visit the Dreaming, probably, before they could have so much as an idea that I'm actually here."  
  
"I didn't go to the Dreaming," Tira points out, "not that first time."  
  
Stel's smile is wry, and a little sad. "Tira, you died," she reminds her, and Hamir's staff jerks wildly - Tira frowns over at him, and sees how tightly his hands clench around it.  
  
"She _ what."  
  
_ "Only for a few seconds!" Stel reassures. "I kept her with me in the Dreaming until her heart started beating again. I wasn't going to let Death take her."  
  
Hamir works his jaw, mouth opening and closing soundlessly a few times.  
  
"You seem more upset by this than I am," Tira laughs, and turns to face forward and keep moving, "I'm not actually dead, Hamir. I'm standing right here in front of you."  
  
"And so is our other dead best friend!" He snaps, and Tira's steps falter, a little. "So forgive me for not being _ 'okay' _ with the idea of losing you too, Tira!"  
  
"You haven't lost me," Stel says softly. "I've always been with you. And I always will."  
  
Hamir falls silent once more, and before Tira can open her mouth to start on any of the counterarguments she'd been tossing around, she realises that Hamir had shut up at just the right time, because ahead of them she can hear movement. People. Animals and the clack of cart wheels turning on hardened claybanks; the clanging of metal on metal.  
  
_ A military supply truck, _ she thinks. Guarded, because of what happened in Larksnettle.  
  
They're moving at a sedate pace - audible, but not visible, though that will change soon. Thank the Stars that the natural ambient sound of a convoy is loud enough to cover for the sound of Hamir's shouts -  
  
"Into the river," she hisses, "Quickly, into the reeds, before they pass us."  
  
Hamir shoots her a confused, questioning look, but hastens to obey. Maybe things between them are tense, maybe he's upset at her and the world in general, but he still knows her, and even as children, Tira's senses had always just been _ better _ than anyone else they knew. He might not be able to hear the convoy heading their way, but she sure can.  
  
They duck into the river, sinking low into the reeds that stand guard along the banks. The water is mercifully cool, even as it stinks of river mud, but an all new coat of sweat is breaking out over Tira from the sheer adrenalin thrumming through her body.  
  
_ Not a fight. Not a fight. Can't afford to have this become a fight, Tira.  
  
_ Doesn't stop her from wanting it to be one. Doesn't keep her hand from aching for her sword.  
  
Stel hovers before them, in the limbo between worn down road and running water, wringing her hands with uncertainty. Tira tries to summon up a reassuring smile before the convoy is in sight, and she pulls back further into the reeds, ducking down deeper into the water, pulling Hamir with her.  
  
"Get your head down lower," she hisses, barely a breath as she tries to be as silent as possible.  
  
"Easy for you to say," Hamir mumbles, just as quiet. _ "You're _ short."  
  
For just a moment, Tira contemplates how easy it would be to drown him right now.  
  
She can't see the convoy, when it passes - doesn't want to risk being found by raising her head, though the voice of Fox in the back of her mind is nagging her for numbers on supplies and troops - but she can hear it. Men and women alike laughing as they pass, and Tira grits her teeth as the rage in her rises up like a tide being drawn by its bloodsoaked moon.  
  
She'd thought, before, that Hamir had made her angry. Now, standing next to him, feeling the pulse of _ hate hate hate _ flow through her, she knows that Hamir had made her _ upset _ . He'd _ hurt _ her.  
  
The Empire makes her angry.  
  
"They're gone," says Stel, voice hushed even though no one else can hear her. "I think you can get out, now."  
  
They clamber out onto the banks together, and while Tira wrinkles her nose at the way her waterlogged clothes cling to her now, she knows that within the hour, she'll be bone dry again. It's not quite noon, yet, but the sun is high enough to be merciless.  
  
She looks sideways to Hamir, and has to bite down a smile at how disgruntled he looks. Her clothes are light and thin; meant for speed and ease of movement. A little water isn't too much extra weight on her, but Hamir? Layered down in a heavy priest’s mantle and cloak, he looks like he regrets his existence.  
  
He's also studiously avoiding looking in Tira's direction, and that's when she realises that light and thin clothing is - yeah, light and thin.  
  
If it had been anyone else but Hamir, she probably would have been embarrassed, but as it is, it's all she can do to stop herself from falling into hysterics.  
  
Stel's bright eyes say that she's figured it out, too, and when she sees Tira looking at her, she mouths _ such a gentleman, _ and that's it, there's no hope, Tira is lost.  
  
When she doubles over, clutching her stomach as she laughs, Hamir scowls at her. "What?" he says. _ "What?"  
  
_ "Hamir," Tira gasps out, "Hamir. _ You've seen me naked."  
  
_ Hamir rears back, affronted. "Yeah, when we were _ kids," _ he says.  
  
"Well, it's not like Tira's changed much since then," Stel points out. "She's as short as ever."  
  
_ "Hey! _ I got boobs," Tira protests, and Hamir buries his face in his hands.  
  
"Please," he says, "Please, can we just keep moving."  
  
His tone is so hopeless that it sets Stel off again, and Tira is soon following her, giggling and trying to avoid Hamir's gaze, because whenever she looks back at him a fresh batch of hilarity wells up. And when Hamir taps his staff against the ground, dispelling the water in his robes with a flashing hiss of steam while pointedly leaving Tira still soaked? The sheer _ indignation _ on her face even manages to make him smile.   
  
For just a moment, at the edge of the Selene, it doesn’t feel like they’re at war. For a moment, it feels like _ them _ again.  
  
It feels like maybe, just maybe, they could actually make this _ work. _

-x-


	3. The Crossing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A meeting between two rivers and two worlds.

-x-

She sees them down the road, a string of lights blazing in astral space.

She counts six of them, wheezing and snorting on their skeletal metal frames, smokestacks belching puffs of steam into the air. The work of an Onyxian inventor, or so she’s told-- mechanized carts that move by themselves, no horses required.

In the shadowed world of astral space, the light of life-- and magic-- shines like a star. She can see the ruddy glow in the heart of each machine: a chunk of magicite, imbued with the power of elemental fire, shining and pulsing as if it were alive. And she can see the shadows gathered around each stone, sitting in the open backs of each cargo truck or marching alongside the convoy in a loose formation. Umbran soldiers, forcibly stripped of their magic. Holes in the world where people should have been.

She feels the presence behind her, and pointedly slips back into realspace. She breathes out a sigh, her eyes returning to vivid violet from their previous cloudy, ghostly gray.

“I count six trucks,” she reports, flipping her long, dark hair over her shoulder. “Thirty, maybe forty men on foot.”

Her companion, sidling up beside her, curls into a gap-toothed grin.

“Oh man,” the other girl beams. “This is gonna be easy.”

“I don’t know about this, Mika,” she fidgets.

“C’mon, Tanya,” the girl smiles dangerously, a hand clapped on her shoulder. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“An armed convoy, in broad daylight?” she protests. “Your ‘friends’ must be out of their minds. Either the cargo they’re carrying is absolutely priceless--”

“Or they have nothing left to lose,” Mika cuts in. She squeezes Tanya’s shoulder and nudges the other girl further down into the bushes.

Below them, the convoy continues to loudly and clumsily roll its way down the road.

Crouched in the forest’s undergrowth, Tanya slowly becomes uncomfortably aware of how close Mika is. Mika’s arm is still around her shoulders, their faces so close they’re practically breathing the same air-- but despite the warmth in her cheeks, there’s something in Mika’s expression, a certain wild, vengeful glint in Mika’s eyes, that chills Tanya to the bone.

“Mika?” she whispers.

“Shhh,” Mika says. _“Listen.”_

-x-

Hamir grunts as Tira grabs him by his mantle and yanks him down into the scrub. He grumbles, and Stel meets his eyes with what might have been a sympathetic glance. The sun is high in the sky, so high that there aren’t even shadows to lurk within. Tira, faced with the choice between traveling without cover and not traveling at all, had compromised: they were on the Selene Highroad, a well-worn footpath running parallel to the main trade road paved in baked clay. With no cover save shadowless trees and the lip of the hill itself, Tira had ordered them all to drop flat. They watched, wary, as the mechanized convoy trundled up the road below them, shielded from view by the hill itself.

“Another one?” Hamir wonders. “That must be the fifth one to pass us, already.”

“Well, Lark’s Crossing is a major port,” Stel chimes in. “Must be a busy day at the docks.”

“Shh. Shh!” Tira hisses. “Listen. Do you hear that?”

Hamir holds his breath. Below them, the clanking of boots on clay tile, distant conversation, the whistling snort of magicite engines. Above them, rustling leaves and bright, cheerful birdsong.

“There,” Tira whispers. “There it was again.”

“It’s just a lark,” Hamir shrugs. “Larksnettle and the Crossing are full of them. It’s just a lark, nesting for spring.”

“Exactly,” Tira mutters, tugging at her collar. “Does it _feel_ like spring to you?”

Hamir shoots her a look, realization dawning in his eyes.

Then a volley of arrows comes whistling through the trees and into the Imperial convoy below.

-x-

Smooth and well practiced, Tira's rolling back and tugging Hamir with her when she hears the first twang of an arrow being loosed before it becomes clear they weren't the ones being shot at.

Panicked imperial shouts become dying gasps that gurgle and rasp out of torn throats, and Tira can't help the grin that rips across her face. Her grip on Hamir tightens before she lets him go, and takes up her sword instead.

"You said we weren't going to fight," Hamir hisses.

"I said we weren't _ starting _ any fights," she corrects. "In case you haven't realised, we just got dragged into one!"

And then she's all but flying down to the road proper, sword drawn low, almost humming at her side as the wind glides over it.

An ache settles in her as she rushes into the panicked fray, but she doesn't give in to the bloodcall - not yet, not yet, even as imperials swing at her wildly, she simply ducks and dodges, and moves forward to her goal:

The magicite powered carriage, at the heart of the convoy.

Truthfully, she has no idea what it could be carrying, beyond the vague assumption that it must be something valuable if they're using magicite to move it around quicker - but she's sat through Fox's lectures and Snake's on top of hers. She knows how these things work.

And she knows how to take care of them.

Like a dancer riding the winds, Tira reaches the carriage, blade at the ready. Inside the large machine rests something that's not quite a heart, but something she can cut through all the same.

The void of her blade cuts through metal to pierce magic, and as surely as if she'd smashed the entire thing to pieces, the engines stop.

"Well done, princess," whispers a soft voice beside her, and Tira jerks back to attention as her triumph bleeds out for wariness. "I wasn't expecting to see _ you _ here."

An unfamiliar face, but a familiar mark, curled in coffee-dark ink on the underside of her chin, trailing down her throat - obvious enough to see; subtle enough to be hidden by a simple scarf, or even a head tilt.

The mark of the Fox. A sister.

Questions burn in Tira's mind and on her tongue, but they don't have time for that. Her fellow rebel winks, and is gone with a smile, darting into and out of the fray like a ghost.

The actual ghost haunting Tira isn't far off, either - Stel stumbles into battle like a lost girl, and Hamir, scowling, is right behind her.

Tira raises a brow at him, and lunges forward to smash aside the lance that had been aiming for Hamir's unprotected back - her friend snarls, and sends a spiralling plume of flame to ignite the imperial's clothes.

"You should have stayed back," she says, conversational, and Hamir snorts.

"And what? Let you get hurt? Don't be stupid."

"You hate fighting, Hamir."

"I hate the thought of watching you die more," he says, grim and blunt and clearly nervous. "If you hadn't rushed in so recklessly -"

"Lesstalkingmorefighting!" Stel yelps as a crossbow bolt flies past them at inhuman speed - damn the Empire and all their fancy little gadgets. Pneumatic crossbows were the worst. At least they were a nightmare to aim with.

"Are you going to be okay out here?"

Hamir shoots her a droll look. "I have your back," he says firmly, and for the moment, at least, Tira believes him.

"Okay," she says, and feels that wild battle drum begin to beat with her heart. "Okay. Let's do this."

-x-

Hamir shudders at the devil-may-care grin on Tira’s lips, the wicked glint in her eyes-- but it’s not like he can hold her back. She bolts down the road in an instant, zig-zagging between bewildered Imperial troopers like a rushing river, their pained cries and bloodied gasps like splashes of foam cresting the rapids. Tira’s stolen black blade doesn’t glint in the light-- she wields it like a spike of pure darkness, the jet-black sword never seeming to get so much as a speck of blood upon it. It was as if the blade were cursed, thirsting for blood, and Tira was answering its call, fighting like a woman possessed.

Two, three, four troopers hit the ground without Tira even breaking a sweat, until finally Hamir loops his arms around her waist and hurls her down. They tumble to the ground and roll sideways under one of the trucks, just in time for a quarrel of crossbow bolts to punch into the metal chassis above them.

Stel, lagging behind, squeals in surprise as the steam-powered repeating crossbow stitches a line of bolts through her incorporeal form. She ducks down beside Tira and Hamir, patting at her torso in astonishment.

“I know I’m a ghost, but that is the _ weirdest _ feeling,” Stel laughs, a little too loudly.

“Doesn’t all this seem a little excessive for a bunch of tax collectors?” Hamir asks.

“Oh, have some _ backbone _,” Tira snorts. “These aren’t tax collectors, they’re thieves. Extortionists. They’re bleeding our country, our people, dry. I think it’s only fair we bleed ‘em in return.”

“Tira, listen to yourself!” Hamir hisses, but she’s already gone.

An unfortunate trooper standing too close to the truck cries out as Tira’s black blade punches into his calf. He yelps, crumples, and Tira pounces, plunging her blade into his throat. A fellow trooper closes in while Tira’s finishing his comrade, his sword flashing down. Tira raises her sword to block, just an instant too slow--

Hamir catches the blade on his staff. He slaps the sword from the trooper’s hands with a crack to his wrist, before smashing the trooper in the chest with a heavy, two-handed swing. Firelight flashes with the impact, his staff’s headpiece shining like the sun, and the trooper hits the ground, gobs of molten scale mail trailing in his wake.

The ground shifts beneath them and suddenly they’re lying flat. An instant later, a huge gout of flame rockets over their heads, scouring the hills they were traveling upon and setting the forest alight.

They see him-- an Imperial trooper manning a weapon mounted atop one of the trucks. He pulls a lever back on the device, ejecting a depleted sliver of magicite in a curl of steam. The dull grey rock falls, inert, onto the truck bed.

“Ugh!” Stel throws her hands up. “Typical. Keep a hearth lit for a whole week, or fire that big ugly thing for five seconds. Totally worth it, Empire!”

“Stel!” Hamir hisses.

The trooper slots another piece of shining red fire magicite. The weapon roars in his hands--

Tira reflexively brings her sword up to block, and, somehow, she succeeds-- the plume of unnatural red fire parts around her sword like a river against a stone. As the flames recede, she stares at her sword in shock, studying the line of faint white runes that glimmer to life across the metal.

Her sword, stolen from Imperial hands. A null blade. Cursed. So sharp it can even cut through magic.

The Imperial trooper recovers from his own shock, and ejects the spent magicite with a crank of a lever and a hiss of steam. As he slots another piece of magicite in and prepares for another shot, Tira draws the crossbow from the canvas sleeve on her back, takes aim--

Tira’s shot vanishes into the flames, engulfed immediately. She flinches from the blast of radiant heat, reaching for her sword.

But then Hamir is beside her, one hand raised in benediction, the other held firmly around his staff, as he plants himself like a tree between Tira and danger. He silently wills the fire to halt, and it obeys, the plume of fire tracing a circle around them in the dirt but not breaking through. Through the fire, Hamir reaches out, past the plume of harnessed magic forced out through this machine, past the drained, inert stone sitting within the device’s firing chamber, down into the engine below, its magicite core still burning bright.

Hamir takes the flame in his fingers, and crushes it in his fist.

An explosion annihilates the trooper, the truck, and the rest of his squad, hurling everyone else in the area off their feet. Hamir hugs Tira to his chest as the shockwave passes harmlessly over them both, shielded by Hamir’s magic.

“Whoa,” Stel blinks, astonished. “Could you _ always _ do that?”

“Not without help,” Hamir mutters.

Stel squeals in surprise as a piece of magicite passes through her head and smacks Hamir in the arm. He glances up to see a girl standing atop the burning wreckage, a pair of leather packs over her shoulders.

“Hey!” she calls. “Next time try not to damage the goods, huh?”

The girl gives them a grin and a wink, before disappearing into the woods. The shockwave from the exploding truck blew out most of the fires in the hills, but the ruined convoy itself was still smoldering. Hamir studies the burning wreckage, the scattered bodies, the hooded shadows descending around them to pick through the remains.

“Time to run, yeah?” Stel wonders, her elbow phasing through Tira’s arm as if she could still give her a friendly nudge. “Unless you _ know _ these guys.”

Hamir frowns, replaying the last few adrenaline-filled moments. They’d avoided the first blast from that flamethrower… but how? They didn’t see it coming. It didn’t feel like they fell. It was like someone reached out, grabbed them by their sleeves, and yanked.

Not by their sleeves. Their shadows.

“There’s someone here,” Hamir murmurs, thoughtful.

“Well, yeah, the rebels, I can see ‘em right now--” Stel chimes in.

“Not them,” Hamir says firmly. “Someone else. A witch.”

-x-

Tanya studies the strangers from her perch in the bushes, a hand over her mouth. A rebel swordswoman. A fire mage. And a girl that she found strangely familiar-- a girl she shouldn’t have been able to see.

She hears a rustle behind her, and her shoulders sag in relief.

“Oh, gods, Mika, don’t just run off like that--”

She freezes. An Imperial trooper stares at her through his empty-eyed skull helm.

Tanya twitches her fingers. A piece of her shadow shoots into his and the trooper freezes in place, partway to drawing the sword on his belt. She hooks her fingers, and a tendril of darkness forms like a whip in her left hand. She snares him by the ankle and yanks. The trooper stumbles, cries out--

\--and dies, a shard of darkness transfixing his throat.

Tanya steps aside and lets the trooper crumple to the ground. She grimaces, and nudges him with her boot, rolling him off the ledge and down towards the road.

Another rustling behind her. Tanya exhales and flexes her fingers, her whip and dagger vanishing into violet light.

Tanya grunts as a leather pack flies out of the undergrowth and into her arms. Mika emerges a moment later, her own pilfered pack slung over her shoulders.

“Mika,” Tanya breathes. “Oh, thank Luna…”

“Don’t swear by Luna here in Corona,” Mika teases. “That’s how you get weird looks.”

“Right, right…” Tanya murmurs. She reaches out, fretting, brushing soot from Mika’s cheek. Mika playfully bats her hand away.

“What, were you worried about me or something?” Mika teases.

“_ Yes! _” Tanya insists, adamant. “There was an explosion!”

“In my defense, I didn’t invite the fire mage,” Mika laughs.

Tanya balls her fists. “Just… don’t… _ scare _ me like that, Mika.”

Mika grins that cat-like grin. She briefly pulls Tanya in for a one-armed hug, before reaching up and playfully patting her cheek.

“You’re cute,” Mika teases. “Come on. Let’s get out of here and see what we got.”

-x-

A witch, Hamir says, and Tira is immediately tense.

She doesn't let herself look away from Hamir's uncertain frown or Stel's inquisitive blinks, as much as she wants too - a scan of the area after a battle is normal, sure but witches don't exactly fit neatly into that category. Until they've figured out just how they're going to deal with it (preferably quickly, with Tira's blade) she doesn't want to set it off, or even alert it to the fact they know of its presence here.

Magicite carriages and a witch, though... just what were the Imperials carting down the Highroad?

Noise, to the side, and the sister Tira had spoken to briefly earlier makes her way back onto the road, another girl close behind. She steps with confidence, but there's a certain wariness to her gait as she strolls forward.

Tira matches her step for step, ignoring Hamir's disgruntled hiss as he realises she's arranged them so he's behind her, and they stop about a stone's throw away from each other; just at the edges of an instantly decided No Man's Land.

Hamir's gaze on her back is burning - she can well imagine his questions; isn't she a rebel, like you? You can't even trust someone on the same side as you, Tira? - but this is something Hamir has never understood: when it comes hunger, you can't trust anyone, and that's what, all over, the entire Resistance is. A nation of hungry people.

And Tira refuses to starve.

She knows she's not the only one like that, who wants to trust and take at face value but is also, in the end, so very, very selfish, and so very, very angry. And so, she is wary. Even when the sister before her just smiles, as on edge as she is, knowing why, and not judging.

Her smile is a little rueful, though.

"Well met, Sister," she says, and her voice echoes out above the faint crackling of the machinery still burning low around them. "I wasn't expecting to run into someone on assignment on the Highroad." It's not a question, but it is leading. She wants answers - she wasn't out that long. What on earth had happened, in the handful of days she'd been away?

"Well met, Princess," her sister says, coy and almost echoing her. Only practice keeps her from flinching at the term of - mockery? And she resists the urge to wince under the sudden intensity of Hamir's glare and Stel's deeply interested sound of confusion.

Dammit. It's not _ her _ fault Fox favours her.

"This little envoy left the city in one hell of a hurry," her sister continues on, absentmindedly fingering the edge of one of her blades. "So, it wasn't a big planned attack - that's why there's only us here. The Imps are moving too much, too soon, lately. The higher ups think they're planning something. Something big." Cool eyes lock with hers. "I'm Whisper, by the way. And I'd be very interested in knowing what the Fox's favourite is doing, all the way out here, alone but for one man guided by the Sky's Light." Those eyes aren't so cool anymore, when they flick to Hamir, and Tira is reminded, uncomfortably, that there are some amongst the Resistance who hate the church almost as vehemently as they hate the Empire.

The stars abandoned us, in our hour of need.

This situation hasn't fallen apart, not yet - but Tira is very, very aware of how easily it could. She shifts, to stand once more in front of Hamir - who had stepped to the side of her shadow earlier - but keeps her hands from reaching for the hilt of her blade or crossbow, no matter how her hands ache for them. Hopefully, that will make it clear that Hamir is under her protection - but unless 'Whisper' forces it, she has no intention of fighting.

Whisper's amused - but wary - look says she gets the message.

Tira is just about to relax, when behind her something else goes... wrong.

Stel gasps. "Hamir," she hisses._ "Hamir!" _

She can't look over her shoulder, not really, not with Whisper's eyes on her - and Hamir, thankfully, is smart enough to know he can't talk.

Two short. Pause. One long, one short, one long - Hamir's fingers tap out a message on the staff he still grips tight, and Tira doesn't really even need to be focusing on the message to translate it, three letters in.

_ I know _ , Hamir tells Stel, and even without him physically speaking, Tira can hear the grim weight in his voice. She wants to scream. Know _ what? _

She can't ask. Not yet, not now. She knows that. She knows that.

For now, she simply keeps her smile up. "We're heading for the Crossing," she says, "but we're in no real rush." She tilts her head, and spread her hands. An offer. "You need some help sorting through your 'assignment?'"

Whisper grins, wide and vicious and true. "Thought you'd never ask," she says, and steps forward to take Tira's outstretched hand.

They shake on it.

Whisper’s a slippery one. Right away, she pulls her hand out of Tira’s grip and coquettishly walks two fingers up Tira’s arm, a sly smile on her lips.

“Then again…” Whisper coos. “...this ambush left me kind of parched. Maybe the two of us could get a drink, if that’s alright with you, Princess.”

Somehow, Whisper makes that word sound both affectionate and like a threat. Everyone has an agenda. And nobody does anything for free. Tira’s known that for years now, and normally, she wouldn’t let a little flirting with ulterior motives get under her skin. But the way Hamir coughs and glances away, as if to give her and Whisper some _ privacy _ ? _ That _ makes pink flick across her cheeks, and Whisper’s smile just a bit more smug.

“That sounds nice,” Tira says thinly, pointedly grabbing Whisper’s wrist and pulling her hand away from her arm. “But first, I need to see the Fox.”

“You and everyone else,” Whisper smiles. “I’m surprised you haven’t heard. The whole cell’s been recalled. One big family reunion.”

The group starts making their way up the Highroad towards Lark’s Crossing. Even for an easily-hikable main road, it’s relatively slow going for those without fancy magicite engines or the training to leap across treetops. Already, Tira and Whisper have outpaced the two mages, doubtlessly so they could talk out of earshot.

Still, Hamir doesn’t want to take any chances by speaking aloud. He spares a suspicious, sidelong glance to his companion in black and violet, and is immediately exasperated by Stel’s antics.

Stel’s dancing around the other girl like a woman possessed. What Hamir had taken for panic in her voice, earlier, seems to have really been glee. Out of her manic pantomiming, Hamir is able to discern her general message: “I know her. She’s a friend.”

Hamir finds that unlikely. But The Dreaming works in mysterious ways.

_ You know what I am. _

Hamir’s eyes grow wide. He glances warily at the girl beside him.

_ I do, _ Hamir thinks back. _ You are a witch. _

_ No. I am a priestess of Luna. _

Hamir can see it. ‘Tanya’’s robes are much like his own, though darker, sleeker, silk to his wool.

_ How are you in my head? _ Hamir asks.

_ It is of Luna’s domain. I practice the art of pure darkness. _

_ There is no pure darkness, _ Hamir argues. _ Only corruptions of earth, wind, fire, and water, twisted by the Starfall. _

_ Pure darkness is Luna’s domain. Death, and dreams. And thoughts are merely dreams of the spoken word. _

Hamir thinks about that for a moment, then nods, conceding the point. It was a nice change from butting heads with Tira all the time. Despite everything, he found himself liking this girl. She was downright civil. For a witch, at least.

Stel, for her part, seemed to share Hamir’s budding fondness. Perhaps overly so. She had her arms around Tanya, clinging to her and nuzzling her neck from behind. Stel had picked her legs off the ground, floating, pulled around by the other girl as if she were a cape.

_ Wait. _ Hamir blinks, squinting.

_ You can see her, _ he wonders, astonished. _ You can _ ** _touch_ ** _ her. _

Tanya’s smile grows sheepish as she reaches up around her neck and gives Stel’s hand a squeeze.

_ Only to a point. But… yes. I can. Through Luna’s power. _

Hamir blows out a bewildered sigh, long and slow. He glances ahead at Tira, and the gleaming black null blade hanging on her hip. This girl could change... everything. But old grudges aren’t undone in a day.

_ Are you with the Empire? _ Hamir wonders.

Tanya shakes her head.

_ I’m _ ** _from_ ** _ the Empire, _ she sends. _ That’s not quite the same thing. _

Up ahead, Whisper loops an arm around Tira’s and pulls her along, walking as she talks. Tira’s not sure what to make of the girl’s handsy demeanor. She can never quite tell if Whisper wants to jab a knife between her ribs, her tongue down her throat-- or, more worryingly, if the latter would lead to the former.

“The Empire’s getting ready to move on Onyx,” Whisper mutters, glancing over her shoulder at Hamir and Tanya. “They’re sending reinforcements down the river to help break the siege at Onyxia Greatport. Poor bastards have been stuck at the border for months. We’ve been bleeding ‘em on their way through the Crossing, lifting supplies, thinning their numbers. But Fox thinks the Empire’s had enough.”

“They’re going to wipe out the cell,” Tira muses, thoughtful, “and without us slowing them down, they’ll be able to move on Onyx unopposed and break the stalemate.”

“Got it in one,” Whisper grins. “The inner circle’s going back and forth. Some people say fight. Some people say run, and they can’t even all agree on where to run to. Some say we break East, harass the Empire where we can before their forces even get to the Crossing. Some say we go south, maybe link up with the Crocodile’s guys and see what damage we can do on the water. One thing’s for sure, though: this is gonna be big. Bigger than anything we’ve seen since the Conquest. And if we do decide to take a stand, Fox needs every sword.”

Tira reflexively reaches for the hilt on her hip. “That serious, huh?” she wonders.

“Oh, yeah,” Whisper smiles dangerously. “Which makes me wonder: if Fox won’t put her golden girl on the frontlines, what’s she got you doing instead that’s so damn important?”

For a moment - a long, quiet moment - Tira considers not answering. Not because she has anything to hide, or because she's that untrusting of Whisper, currently...simply because the answer is boring. Boring enough that Whisper could find it false -

\- and if she thinks Tira's lying, _ that _is where true danger will lie.

Still. Tira hates lying, when she doesn't have to, as good as she is at it. So, she tries for truth. "Last operation I was on ended messy," she says, and shrugs. "Had to be healed by a professional." She jerks a thumb back at Hamir. "Imps caught up to us at the Church, and he got dragged into it. Last I knew, I was meeting up with Fox here because of that - _ not _because of a total cell recall."

"Huh." Whisper's low huff of air, right by her ear, is thoughtful. She pulls back from Tira, a little, though she still doesn't step entirely out of what Tira would label her personal space. "Well, that's less interesting than what I was hoping for." Her eyes narrow, and for a moment, the tension running along her jaw is plain to see. She looks...concerned. Stressed. "This whole situation stinks," she hisses. "And now you're telling me that even _ you _ don't know what's going on? What the _ hell _are you good for then, princess?"

Tira bristles, opens her mouth to yell, catches herself, takes a deep breath, and then tries again - through gritted teeth, this time. "I have no idea why you're calling me that, but -"

A short burst of angry, hysterical laughter. "You have 'no idea,' do you? Sure, you seem kind of brawn over brains, but you can't be _ that _ blind, can you?"

"I know Fox favours me," Tira says, speaking slowly, carefully. "I don't understand why, either - but it's not a Fox cell thing! It's just a Fox thing. I don't get any special benefits from the fact that she likes to pinch my cheeks when I'm at HQ!"

"No," Whisper says, "but do you think the rest of the cell is _ blind? _ Everyone knows they're grooming you to be the next to join the inner circle - or maybe even take over. The Foxes are no spring chickens, after all, and this war is about to get a second wind in Onyx. We'll need strong, bright, _ new _ leaders, and word on the rivers is that for the Foxes, it's going to be you."

Tira blinks, a little at a loss. "I'm no leader," she insists, "and the Foxes know that, so whatever word is flowing down the rivers is _ wrong." _

Whisper simply shrugs, though she's looking kind of uncertain now, herself. "Hey, I didn't start the rumours," she says. "I'm just hearing them circulate. A _ lot." _

Troubled, Tira falls silent, lost in her own thoughts. She isn't sure if she actually loses time this way, or if they were actually closer to the Crossing then she thought - but she's brought back to reality by Whisper's sharp intake of breath. She looks up, tracking Whisper's gaze, and -

\- the gates of the Crossing loom above them, barely an hour's distance left between them and their goal.

Whisper grins. "Welcome home, princess," she says.

Tira looks back over her shoulder, at Hamir and Stel, and Whisper's partner that they've been standing by this whole time.

_ Yeah, _ she thinks, caught somewhere between sweet and bitter, _ welcome home. _

-x-

The group trudges forward in a tense, wary silence. But as the arch of the city gates passes overhead, they’re immediately swallowed up by the noise and bustling crowds of Lark’s Crossing.

The Crossing, built astride the intersection of the great rivers Selene and Hyperion, is not the largest city around. It was a trade city, a port city, a place one only went to on their way to somewhere else. But compared to the fields and farmhouses of Larksnettle Village, the Crossing might as well have been the capitol.

Hamir fidgets and frowns. The Imperial occupation of Lark’s Crossing made the force that attacked Larksnettle pale in comparison. Skull-visored Umbran troopers stand sentinel at every street corner, glowering at passersby from behind their helms, crossbows slung over their backs. Beside him, the priestess anxiously tugs at the hood of her cloak. They’re exposed, and they know it. But Whisper strolls right into town with a distinctly confident swagger.

“Pick your chin up, tourist,” Tira mutters, nudging an elbow into Hamir’s ribs. “Half of blending in is acting like you belong.”

“She’s right,” Whisper concurs, flashing a grin. “Although, I get the feeling we won’t have to hide much longer. Day’s coming soon where we’ll be loud and proud…”

The duo helps their partners pick their way down the city streets. Eventually, they find their way to a tavern tucked away at the end of a cobblestone-lined street, a modest, two-storey townhouse with a fireplace merrily crackling away. A wooden signpost over the door identifies the tavern as “The Fox Den”.

“Subtle,” Hamir says dryly.

“Hush,” Tira grumbles.

“Alright, folks,” Whisper begins. “Princess and I are going to talk to some friends of ours. You two are going to stay here. Get a table. Try the pork. Hell, get a room if you want. Just don’t wander off until we get back.”

“They can come with us,” Tira protests.

“Ha!” Whisper scoffs. She would have pinched Tira’s cheek if she didn’t instantly swat her away. “Yeah, no. That’s not the deal. You come with me. They stay right here.”

“That’s fine,” Hamir cuts in, just before Tira blows out an irritated breath. “I know how to keep my head down.”

“Good,” Whisper says. She turns to Tira, bowing with an exaggerated flourish. “After you, my liege.”

Tira just rolls her eyes and lets Whisper lead her inside. She hesitates just long enough to catch Hamir’s eyes over her shoulder.

“Watch her.”

The key clicks in the door. Hamir crosses the cramped inn room in just a few long strides, pulls the curtains closed, and douses the lamp on their table. Sunset paints the room in crimson, gold, and long, shifting shadows.

Hamir takes a deep breath, and lets it out slow.

“...Alright, ‘Tanya’,” Hamir begins carefully. “How do you know Stel?”

The priestess sits at the foot of a bed, her hands neatly folded in her lap. She reaches up and tucks an errant strand of her hair behind her ear with trembling fingers.

“You may want to sit down,” she says. “It’s… a bit of a long story.”

Her throat is tight. She’s afraid, so afraid-- of what, Hamir can’t even fathom, but it certainly isn’t him. At least, not all of it is.

Without a word, Stel takes the girl’s hand in hers, and “Tanya” lets out a shaky breath.

Hamir pulls up a chair. He sets his staff aside, and leans forward, his elbows on his knees, his voice warm and yet somehow still damning.

“Who are you, really?”

-x-


End file.
